CHRIS DAHL: from a High School dropout to PhD in Entomology.
by Vojtech Novotny When I landed for the first time in Papua New Guinea, in May 1995, I was picked up at the Madang airport by my friend and colleague Yves Basset. He arrived in a Landcruiser driven by his newly recruited young assistant, Chris Dahl, who had just dropped out of secondary school because his family could not support his studies. Chris was thus the first PNGnean I had a conversation with, and that later extended in a lot of joint research we have done in PNG. Unfortunately, coming from a farming village family and with his education interrupted at grade 10, the odds were clearly stacked against Chris ever becoming a scientist. However, he never seemed to fully appreciate how hopeless was his situation. Over the years of hard field and laboratory work, he has became a skilled research technician working on insects while also completing secondary school, studying in evenings for distant education programme. Years later, he was admitted to the University of PNG an